In the previous movie I used Motion Sketch to go ahead and create this natural…organic flight-path for this butterfly.…However, there are a couple of problems.…One, it's generally the right shape, but it is little bit jerky, a little bit…rough here and there, and two, when I stop my preview I see that the motion path…has a lot of keyframes. So if I want to do any editing I would be having to move…around quite a few different points.…Now the main reason it has so many keyframes is when I used Motion Sketch I set…the Smoothing parameter to zero.…This is because I want to make sure it captured every single intricacy of my…movement to give me more options later to edit it if I want to.…

Well, that time has come and I'm going to use Smoother to do this.…Note that if you don't have anything selected, Smoother grays out.…Smoother needs to have more than two keyframes selected to be able to…do anything useful.…To select all the keyframes for Position, I merely click on the word Position…and now they all will be selected.…

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Author

Updated

11/7/2016

Released

1/26/2011

In this course, Chris Meyer helps beginning After Effects artists take their animations to the next level. Chris shows how to refine animations to create elegant, coordinated movements with the minimum number of keyframes—as well as slam-downs, whip pans, and other attention-getters. Additional movies show how to reverse-engineer existing animations, create variations on a theme, and master other parts of the program. Even though this course is designed for beginners, even veterans should learn tricks that many experienced users are unaware of. Chris' friendly running commentary lets you in on his mental process as he works on an animation. Exercise files for After Effects CS4 through CC are included with the course.

After Effects Apprentice is created by Trish and Chris Meyer and designed to be used on their own and as a companion to their book After Effects Apprentice.

Topics include:

Understanding how keyframes work under the hood

Controlling the anchor point to create more predictable animations

Mastering the Graph Editor for the ultimate control over keyframes

Animating parameters including motion paths

Hand-drawing motion paths to simplify complex movements

Applying and tweaking Motion Blur

Using hold keyframes

Skill Level Beginner

3h 1m

Duration

422,744

Views

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Q: How do I transition from one piece of animated type to another in After Effects?

A: There isn't an effect that can create these types of transitions. It's really a matter of animating the type and camera, using basic keyframing and positioning.

If
you understand the basics of moving the anchor point of a type layer,
animating the parameters of that layer (Scale, Rotation, Position,
etc.) and then separately animating the camera around the type layers, you
can achieve different types of transitions. Check out the following videos for more information:

Q: This course was updated on 11/09/2012. What changed?

A: We have updated the movie dealing with Time Display to be applicable to working with different versions of After Effects (from CS4 to CS6). We also added a movie that shows our premium subscribers how to use the exercise files, including the new exercise files designed for After Effects CS6.

Q: This course was updated on 11/07/2016. What changed?

A: We updated five videos to stay up to date with the latest changes in After Effects CC.